Here is my philosophy. There is going to be either one big winner or many small winners when it comes to the execution of smart contracts and decentralized applications. Likely several small winners, with one company leading the way. Will Ethereum win the battle? Or perhaps a different coin?

In a similar way that Dash and Litecoin have experienced success as competing currencies to Bitcoin, using different code, ideas, governance, algorithms, etc, there will be several smart contract based coins with success. Qtum sells itself as the Ethereum improvement for the East. Tezos is another coin that could complement or overtake ETH one day. I do not know who the "winner" will be, so my plan is to have a position in all the biggest contenders while the market is still young.

Tim Draper's interest in this project is enough to make me do some diligence on it. As if SilverDoge's interest were not enough. Unfortunately I can't buy into every ICO that looks interesting, because my crypto position is not getting any big influx of new cash; it relies now on its own resources to seek new profits in the market. Being a newcomer, I do not have a bank of cheap bitcoin to play with. I, and others in my position, have to be selective.

And Tezos has my interest. I am impressed by its roadmap and the people involved, such as crypto luminaries Emin Gün Sirer and Zooko WIlcox as advisors to the dev team. Unlike Quantum, another promising project with big potential, Tezos is easily accessible to Western investors. The holding company is in the US. I can buy in with BTC or ETH. I like the proof-of-stake, and the fact that you don't need to own the equivalent of a master node to have a say.

So I need to dig deeper, but so far it looks very good. I do wonder if the open-ended ICO means there will be no limit of "tezzies" issued. And what the staking structure will be like, if it will be possible to stake without the meager computing resources of my laptop needing to be online at all times.

Looking forward to more concrete ICO information. "Sometime in June" .... well, June is here.

Have read more about the Tezos platform and my initial impression hasn't changed, though I don't have a good handle on how the release method, designed to take the edge away from "insiders and the fast-fingered," would really curb those who are rich in BTC from pounding the payment addresses for the duration of the early blocks, when bonuses are handed out.

Long John wrote:Have read more about the Tezos platform and my initial impression hasn't changed, though I don't have a good handle on how the release method, designed to take the edge away from "insiders and the fast-fingered," would really curb those who are rich in BTC from pounding the payment addresses for the duration of the early blocks, when bonuses are handed out.

You got to start somewhere, and some of us started early. That's life.

The Tezos fundraiser has been set for July 1, 2017 and will run for approximately 13 days.

A contribution of one bitcoin (1 XBT) will lead to an allocation of five-thousand tezzies (5,000 XTZ) plus a time dependent bonus. This bonus is meant to incentivize contributors not to delay their participation. The bonus starts at 20%, meaning that a contribution of 1 XBT will yield an allocation of 5,000 X (1 + 20%) = 6,000 XTZ and decreases progressively to 0% over 5 periods lasting 400 Bitcoin blocks each.

During the fundraiser you will access https://crowdfund.tezos.com and follow instructions to create a wallet and download a backup of that wallet in the form of a pdf document. We recommend you print, or manually copy this file and place the document in a safe place. Once the Tezos network launches, you will be able to import this wallet into the Tezos client to access your tezzies.

Tezos ICO is uncapped and begins on 01 July. Here is a good walk-thru video for how to contribute. If you want to contribute, I suggest using BTC, and doing so in the first 48 hours to get the maximum bonus. The ICO will run for about 2 weeks. The minimum contribution is 0.1 Bitcoin. If you are sending ETH, do NOT send from an exchange.

So I think I was able to transfer 0.1 bitcoin to Tezos. I went to the Tezos web site, created the wallet, got the address to send the bitcoin to, went to coinbase, hit the send and request tab, put 0.1 in the box and cut and pasted the tezos addresss and boom I think it worked. My first crypto transaction. Now I got to find that link to see if it actually went through in an hour or so. This is so weird. I hope it works out like that song from Dire Straights .... "Money for nothing"

The max bonus period is nearing the end for Tezos, and they have raised over $110 million already. I expect funds to keep coming in, but not at the same rate that they were in the first 2 days. My guess is this will finish at $350 - $400 million. We'll see how close I am.

11 days and 11 hours to go.

Max bonus will end around bitcoin block 474,022. You can see where the block is currently here: https://blockchain.info/

This replaces an earlier post in which I described apparently losing my contribution after sending less than 0.1 BTC worth of an alt coin. I finally connected with the Tezos team via a YouTube video comments section. There is a secondary Tezos site with appended information, tezos.ch, and they sent me an email contact. So we are working on it. In gratitude I contributed 0.1 BTC (not alt coin) and will possess the kingly sum of 575 tezzies when the time comes. I'd better pick out my lambo now and beat the rush.